Posted
by
samzenpuson Monday August 06, 2012 @12:37PM
from the we-own-it-now dept.

derekmead writes "NASA's livestream coverage of the Curiosity rover's landing on Mars was practically as flawless as the landing itself. But NASA couldn't prepare for everything. An hour or so after Curiosity's 1.31 a.m. EST landing in Gale Crater,the space agency's main YouTube channel had posted a 13-minute excerpt of the stream. Ten minutes later, the video was gone, replaced with the message: 'This video contains content from Scripps Local News, who has blocked it on copyright grounds. Sorry about that.' That is to say, a NASA-made video posted on NASA's official YouTube channel, documenting the landing of a $2.5 billion Mars rover mission paid for with public taxpayer money, was blocked by YouTube because of a copyright claim by a private news service."

This is what happens when you automate things and accept all claims as true. Sad thing is, "the industry" will say this is a small price to pay, and NASA being a government agency will not pursue it. This needs to be a wakeup call before we allow ISP's to monitor and police everything - there needs to be a human in the loop to fix these issues - and timely, not is days or weeks, but with the same SLA as the automated system. Right now, it is almost like the recording industry is calling the shots and everyone is guilty unless they prove they are not infringing. In the US, shouldn't the system be the other way around?

"Innocent until proven guilty" is a legal thing. This is more of a corporate thing, and when it's the coprs vs the people, it works the other way around, "guilty until proven innocent". (and then "guilty again after you prove your innocence, rinse and repeat")

It'd be quite entertaining if Scripps Local News did this entirely on purpose, to raise awareness of the abusability of these procedures. Heck, I'd like to see them do what the **RA like to do. NASA file a counterclaim and get it back, Scripps file another notice, repeat that a few times and watch Youtube auto-suspend NASA's youtube account for three abuse claims. (doesn't matter if they are reversed, three claims is all it takes) That would generate some AWESOME publicity!

It seems more-likely that Scripps contracted with Youtube to automatically have any content removed that has an "audio signature" which matches Scripps own uploaded videos. In other words, no people involved.

I've heard radio host Alex Jones complain about this. Some corporation (CBS Radio if I recall correctly) has contracted a DJ for their national news starting in 2011. However they claim ownership of ALL recordings by that DJ, both present and past. So youtube is automatically removing all videos of said DJ, including interviews on Jones' show from ten years ago. There's no person involved... just a computer doing automatic filtering & automatic takedowns.

No... let's keep using it, but let's use it in our OWN context, where we MEAN let's kill all the lawyers, because we have OTHER reasons than did Shakespeare's character, because OUR lawyers have basically hamstrung our society, crippled our technology, retarded our advancement, and saddled us with more bad law than good law.

...when you assume that a short string of words Shakespeare (or whoever) wrote down once can only be used in the manner he used it -- even if uttered verbatim -- it is you who look like a pretentious idiot.

Language is what we make it, as we use it. That's its nature. Were it not that way, we would all be constrained to meaning what characters in sitcoms meant when they mouthed phrases we use every day.

Language is living -- but Shakespeare's particular use is relevant only within his art.

Often abused by lawyers, anyway. They like to claim that Shakespeare meant that that killing lawyers was a prelude to the Apocalypse, rather than something that -- as attractive as it might sound -- will never happen. Let's look at the quote in context:

CADE: Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows
reformation. There shall be in England seven
halfpenny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hooped
pot; shall have ten hoops and I will make it felony
to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in
common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to
grass: and when I am king, as king I will be,--

ALL: God save your majesty!

CADE: I thank you, good people: there shall be no money;
all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will
apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree
like brothers and worship me their lord.

DICK: The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

CADE: Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable
thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should
be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled
o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings:
but I say, 'tis the bee's wax; for I did but seal
once to a thing, and I was never mine own man
since. How now! who's there?

Now, is Shakespeare claiming that "seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny" should scare the socks off of people? What about "the three-hooped
pot shall have ten hoops"? No? What about the lack of money, or being fed and clothed by the "king"? Why is it that "Let's kill all the lawyers" is the one jarring piece of reality in a farcical back and forth?

No, Lawyers like to twist the meaning, because they hate having people agree with it. Better for them to point out that one might as well wish for the moon to be edible cheese as to wish for the removal of lawyers, something that Shakespeare did recognize.

Dude, lawyers have taken over our society by creating rules and making sure to enforce them - in most countries they are at the heads of the legislative *and* the executive branches of a government. Basically, the whole government is lawyers.
Since the police and the army are obliged to follow the rules, set by lawyers, as they are obligedto follow their orders, there is really no way for the rest of us to stop them.
And, please, don't start about democracy and elections, as there you are given only the choice between 2 lawyers (or an actor, set forth by the lawyers).

So, the should you feel the urge to kill a lawyer, please go ahead, as this would be in the interest of all non-lawyers and in the interest of democracy, and humankind in general!

Uh, which lawyers do actually protect us? The ones who take a bunch of money from you because their colleagues created unreadable laws, or the ones who cash in on you extort^H^H^H^H^H^H suing someone else?

The problem is that YouTube is very big and they have a lot of copyright infringements. They have to respond "in a timely manner" to copyright claims, so there are two ways to do it: automate everything to a great degree, knowing that non-justified takedowns will sometimes occur, or hire an army of people to do it with Eyeball 1.0. Option 1 is cheaper, so guess what?

Solution: Automate the "Nope, this isn't copyright" process too. If you have a video taken down you can put it back up and the case is referred to a real person. The company/person who was in the wrong then has to pay $100 to the person who dealt with it. Problem solved.

Now if this was a DMCA takedown notice, then NASA could possibly get it back in 15 days...but by using a separate, private agreement with Youtube that gives permission for a wide variety of corporations to claim anything as being 'theirs' with no method of recourse for the actual owner to fight it, is Youtube's failure.

I've heard similar stories. I remember seeing a story about a couple of guys who made a YouTube video. This Tonight Show decided to replay this video during their ending credits. Apparently an automated system detected the original YouTube video as matching the content from the NBC footage, and was automatically taken down.

It's absurdity...

And that is without even considering that detecting a small segment of the NBC broadcast is considered infringement would be considered infringement (and not fair use), while NBC broadcasting the complete video created by someone else was not.

How does this work? A DMCA notice requires somebody to certify under penalty of perjury that he represents the copyright holder. Perjury is a felony that carries up to five years in prison. In a system where scentences are served consecutively, such a script could easily get you sent to prison for the rest of your life.

The penalty must be near-zero. There are people with YouTube channels who bash Islam. Islamists issue DCMA takedowns flatly lying they own it. The reason is the real ownee's response is to counter-claim, easy enough, but they must submit their legal name and address, which is why the Islamists want it. The penalty for them is much less than the street justice penalty they want to hand out.

There are people with YouTube channels who bash Islam. Islamists issue DCMA takedowns flatly lying they own it. The reason is the real ownee's response is to counter-claim, easy enough, but they must submit their legal name and address, which is why the Islamists want it.

Considering how there are tons and tons of such videos all over youtube that haven't been DMCA'd it sounds like you are just repeating typical jihadwatch-style delusional paranoia. But you are welcome to provide a cite to prove me wrong.

The penalty for them is much less than the street justice penalty they want to hand out.

You do have real evidence for this, right?

This isn't one of those "Fox 'News' says Islamists want to kill me in my sleep so I better vote for Romney or everyone I know will get their heads cut off" knee-jerk fear of the other taken to the logical absurd end, right?

This isn't DMCA. YouTube offers "preferred" content owners automated detection of content, with automated takedown or applying forced advertising to the content, with diversion of revenues to the claimed content owner.

This "going way beyond DMCA" is one of the reasons why YouTube are still going despite rampant copyright infringement, and why megaupload (despite abiding by DMCA to the letter) are defunct.

A similar sort of thing has happened to me. I had a funny video, which a local TV channel ran on their show (without permission). They then posted their show on YouTube. As a preferred customer, YouTube took their clip and used it as a reference for an "infringing material" search; unsurprsingly, as my video was the source, it triggered a match, and the revenue on my video was seized. I also got a warning that I was at risk of losing ALL my advertising revenue irrevocably, if I continued to upload "infringing" material.

I appealed the match, but all this meant was that YouTube simply ask the purported "owner" for a manual match. They claimed that they had watched both videos and agreed that they matched, and that was all YouTube wanted. As far as YT were concerned, the appeal had been lost, and the decision was final.

So, I made a DMCA claim on YouTube against the TV channel. Nothing happened. Zip. Nada. In the end, I removed the video, as I'd rather no one got the advertising revenue from my work, than someone who had copied it from me in the first place.

Who gives a shit? For all I care he can believe the moon is made out of cheese. If a man can't otherwise lawfully put out content that he owns (i.e. a radio show) without having to deal with false claims of infringement and red tape, to me that's a problem worth addressing.

Bwahaha. I can totally see Scripps doing this on purpose, but not for the reason you stated. The only awareness that Scripps is interested in raising is the existence of Scripps Local News, which I never heard of until now.

According to the DMCA, if a user disputes a claim from a copyright holder, YouTube should make a video available again, at least until the copyright holder files a second claim to take the disputed video offline again. Instead, YouTube requires the alleged violator to submit a signed counter-claim, under penalty of perjury. (There’s no such penalty for those claiming violations to begin with.) YouTube forwards the claim to the supposed copyright owner and waits ten days for a response. “If we do not receive such notification, we may reinstate the material,” says YouTube, emphasis mine.

Well the article is wrong then. (Not the first time a reporter demonstrated his/her lack of technical understanding.) Here is how it works:

(1) Author/creator submits DMCA Takedown Request(2)(a) The "victim" realized he was wrong and does nothing so item remains offline.(2)(b) Or they say the takedown notice is BS and submits a restore request: "This items does not violate copyright. I own it."(3) The item is then restored. Legally the time is 10 days but many ISPs (including youtube) restore immediately.(4) At that point the alleged copyright owner can file a lawsuit against the alleged violator. The ISP has immunity since it followed steps 1-3.

(2)(c) while the person filing the infringement notice was in the wrong so was the uploader (e.g. neither of them holds the copyright), the item remains offline(2)(d) the uploader belives they are in the right but they are too afraid of lawsuits to assert that right, the item remains offline

While your comment is indeed +5 Insightful. It is also off topic since no company filed a complaint, the video was caught by a over zealous automated system.

It was indeed a company that filed the complaint, their name is right there in the message that the video is blocked by.... That they let a over zealous automated system file complaints on their behalf does not absolve them from being responsible.

While your comment is indeed +5 Insightful. It is also off topic since no company filed a complaint, the video was caught by a over zealous automated system.

It was indeed a company that filed the complaint, their name is right there in the message that the video is blocked by.... That they let a over zealous automated system file complaints on their behalf does not absolve them from being responsible.

Interesting question actually. Not sure that's been tested in law yet.People doing things as a consequence of their employment are representing a company and the company is responsible.Officers of a company are vicariously liable for the things that their employees do.But is a company responsible for the actions of software claiming to represent it?IANAL, just a business student (in another country), so if there's anyone out there who does know, I'd be interested...

"A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."

I added the italics to make the division clear. The first part of that sentence is not under penalty of perjury. Perjury penalties only apply to the statement that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the (alleged) owner. This means it would only be perjury if, for example, the person/organization who filed the takedown notice in Scripps's name wasn't authorized by Scripps to do file DMCA takedown notices. AFAICT, operjury has never applied to whether the notification itself was accurate.

So if you're upset that no one has ever been charged with perjury for filing an inaccurate DMCA takedown notice, you should at least know that it's not because those organizations/people are above the law. Instead, it's because that's simply not what the law actually says.

To make that even more clear: in the context of DMCA takedown notices, it's only perjury if you lie (or are "mistaken") about who you are and who you represent. It's not perjury if you lie or "mistakenly" file an inaccurate takedown notice.

And once again you guys blow it all out of proportion. Nobody is "guilty" here. All that NASA (or anybody else) needs to do is reply to the DMCA takedown request with this response: "This material does not infringe upon anybody's copyright."

The video has been removed and replaced with a message that it was removed due to copyright infringement. That sounds like 'guilty' to me. That's like saying that a criminal isn't proven guilty because they still have an appeal left. Sure, the decision could be reversed, but that decision still exists.

Due to CLAIMED copyright infringement. That's no different then when you get arrested by the police for a CLAIMED act of murder. You are still presumed innocent by the jury and the judge when you go to trial.

Except the cops won't arrest you for a 'claimed act of murder' unless there were:

1. a real provable murder.2. evidence that you committed said provable murder sufficient to get a grand jury to hand down an indictment.3. sufficient evidence that would lead a prosecutor to believe they would win a conviction based on said evidence.

There is no 'Round up the usual suspects!' hue and cry raised every time a body hits the pavement. That's not how the system works here in the US. The automated 'system' in place at Youtube is flakey and generates false positives. This is one. But at the end of the day, I love the fact that a government entity got bit in the ass by it in favor of a corporation. Too bad it was NASA.

Cool - how about we play the game, just in different terms? Anyone is allowed to kick you in the nuts. But after said kick, you have the option to say "hey, I don't like being kicked in the nuts, please don't do that again." From that point forward, that person is no longer allowed to kick you again, unless they want a fight on their hands. Sounds fair, right?

So you are sitting in your kitchen eating some food you just purchased at a store. Suddenly some guys in black suits burst through the window, knock you to the floor, and take the food, leaving behind a message stating that someone else claimed it looked just like the food they bought, so it must have been theirs. And you are claiming it's all OK because you can go down town to an office, fill out a report, and in a couple of weeks they will return your supper to you.
Sheesh

That's not the way the DMCA works. After the posting party sends a properly-worded counterclaim, the next step of the party claiming the copyright violation is to file a lawsuit. They can't just file another DMCA claim.

I understand that's how it's supposed to work, but quite a few people have found it worked for them as I described. Within days (or sometimes hours) of getting their videos reinstated, they'd get another takedown on the same video from the same source. And when you get your 3rd, youtube will suspend your account. You'd expect they'd ignore repeat takedowns, and you'd expect they'd un-tick the three-strikes counter when a counterclaim was filed, but they don't and they don't. At least sometimes. Maybe it's improved recently.

I just reviewed some more recent information and it looks like that in at least some cases they temp suspend you now and send you a "copyright quiz" to fill out. If you pass, you get your account back. If not, you have to wait a few days to retake the quiz. They weren't specific about three strikes, but some accounts can be suspended immediately without even a second incident if they consider the violation bad enough. They also appear to ban other accounts with the same email address on them, so don't use a shared email account (such as family) or you may become collateral damage from the banhammer.

There doesn't appear to be any clear spelled out hard rules anywhere. They're probably trying to keep their options open. If they put it in writing, then their enforcement/interpretation will be disputed.

The problem is that YouTube is trying to comply with a flawed law. The law is flawed enough that real compliance is impossible, but they are trying to put in enough CYA anyway. When you have a law that is as flawed as the DMCA you are going to have problems....and those problems will generally be a mistake in favor of the corporation's who purchased the law. As Jim Neighbors says, "Surprise, surprise, surprise!"

Youtube MUST restore your video, else they will be guilty of a criminal act (under the DMCA).

That is wrong. You need to read DMCA again more carefully (in terms of what its procedures are describing, not the details of those procedures), and then also think about how youtube works, from human labor perspective.

DMCA or not, there are no conditions under which youtube is required to host someone's video. Counter-notices do not create any new hosting requirements for them that they previously wouldn't have had. Youtube could restore the video after getting a counter-notice from NASA, and then they would be absolved of liability to the TV station. But they certainly aren't required to host the video after a counter-notice.

Youtube, like any other host or ISP, is free to immediately "fold" after receiving a notice, without ever bothering to do all the expensive stuff like forwarding notices and dealing with counter-notices. DMCA just assumes that hosts would do such a thing, in the cause of customer service, since the people's whose content would be getting blocked, would presumably be paying the hosts and the hosts would want to continue to collect that money. But when users aren't customers, the forces that make hosts want to do that, are very weak.

Actually from what I hear the DMCA requires immediate carrier response. If they tell the carrier your content is infringing, then your carrier MUST shut it down; it's not their call, legally they must remove the content on claim. Then you can come back and say bullshit, and your carrier can re-instate it, and then it's your legal battle--there's no edit war here, you're now responsible for the content and the carrier by statute is able to legally accept your claim as primary until the court decides who has controlling interest.

Actually from what I hear the DMCA requires immediate carrier response. If they tell the carrier your content is infringing, then your carrier MUST shut it down; it's not their call, legally they must remove the content on claim. Then you can come back and say bullshit, and your carrier can re-instate it, and then it's your legal battle--there's no edit war here, you're now responsible for the content and the carrier by statute is able to legally accept your claim as primary until the court decides who has controlling interest.

No, it's worse than that. After you say "bullshit", the claimaint can say "not bullshit" -- then the provider has to (in order to retain safe harbor) take it down again until a court says otherwise. Basically an automatic injunction.

This is what happens when you automate things and accept all claims as true.

... as required by law.

Sad thing is, "the industry" will say this is a small price to pay...

You must be referring to That Company Which Must Not Be Named, run by the Dark Lord [censored], and [pronoun] legions of [redacted] lawyers! Of course, it's so obvious!/snark His name is Cary Sherman, and he doesn't speak for the industry; He speaks for a very small portion of it which profits a great deal from the rest of it being forced into using its monopoly. Subtle difference.

This needs to be a wakeup call before we allow ISP's to monitor and police everything - there needs to be a human in the loop to fix these issues -

There is a human loop to fix these issues, but it's not in your ISP's office but your legislator's. An

So you're advocating that the only way for the laws to better reflect the "people" as opposed to corporations is for a civil uprising resulting in murder of the "ruling" class?

When you make peaceful protest impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable. There is a massive power imbalance, and the police overwhelmingly support corporations. Protesters are routinely disappeared in this country, or held on phoney charges, etc. When US Bank had protesters out front, they literally hooked up the hoses and power sprayed away the sin for weeks at a go... in a public square... all to keep the protesters from having a place to congregate near their headquarters. The "routine cleaning" that went on for weeks stopped at the next city hall meeting, when they passed a resolution in secret forbidding protest in the public meeting area, paid for by US tax dollars, as in on public property. The next morning, the protesters showed up and were promptly shoved into a dozen police SWAT vans and taken away, held for weeks without charge. The entire affair was later revealed to have been supported by the Department of Homeland Security, who labeled the protesters potential domestic terrorists and persons of interest.

When you have this kind of overbearing police response at the request of a corporation, with full cooperation from all levels of government, what option do you realistically think the people have for peaceful recourse? The Constitution provided that "the right of the people to peacefully assemble shall not be infringed," not just because it's necessary to the efficient running of a democratic state, but because as long as people feel their concerns are being heard (even if nothing is done), they're very unlikely to become violent. People become violent when they're isolated.

Having places for public protest is essential to the national security of this country. Without it, people's anger and emotion builds until it finds a violent release. We're nearing the high-water mark of violence; Our society goes through cycles of violence on a 50 year mark. In 4 years, we hit that high water mark again. If we don't give activists the space they need to non-violently protest, then (statistically) there's a very high probability that we'll experience high levels of politically-motivated violence by individuals acting alone or in small groups. In short, our anti-terrorism initatives are leading to a perfect storm of conditions to create terrorism.

I don't want violence; I've seen more than enough to last me many lifetimes. But not everyone shares that view; Some people think a certain level of violence is acceptable and many of them work for the government. They're going to get a lot of people hurt and killed. There's a simple, proven method of avoiding this: Public meetings. That's something our police are dead-set on preventing.

. Protesters are routinely disappeared in this country . . ..the protesters showed up and were promptly shoved into a dozen police SWAT vans and taken away, held for weeks without charge. The entire affair was later revealed to have been supported by the Department of Homeland Security, who labeled the protesters potential domestic terrorists and persons of interest.

Those two claims are astounding charges. They are incredibly serious claims, so serious that my initial suspicion is that you're exaggerating and/or making it up, OR that you got your information from someone else who was.

But hey, maybe you're not. Maybe it's true. Can you point to any reliable accounts for either of these two claims? Again, those two claims are (1) that protesters in the US are "routinely disappeared", or (2) that protesters in the US have been held for weeks without being charged for an

Those two claims are astounding charges. They are incredibly serious claims, so serious that my initial suspicion is that you're exaggerating and/or making it up, OR that you got your information from someone else who was.

My information is from someone who was a direct participant in the aforementioned action. I was provided camera footage, as well as web casts of the event and other "boots on the ground" media, as well as the dates, times, arresting agency, and number arrested. I was asked to investigate as an independent agent by two people who were regular participants in the protests, having been referred to me through a mutual friend.

The arresting agency maintained that a couple people who I have footage of being at the event and being led away in cuffs, were never arrested. They have no paperwork, no indication that they were ever in contact with the police that night. Those people haven't been seen or heard from since. They simply aren't on the grid anymore.

I provided my findings to those two people, who a few months later told me they couldn't get any traction on my findings with local press. I haven't been in touch with them since. I also found out after the fact that I wasn't the first, and probably won't be the last, to get this result. Most of the time, there is no hard identity confirmation and solid evidence of their arrest; Especially at smaller gatherings, there isn't anything but another person's word that the other was present. Cameras are often confinscated and destroyed (or erased). Only in larger crowds to police shy away from this tactic of confinscation.

Given the evidence, it's highly probable that US citizens have been arrested and then removed from society, temporarily or permanently, via an unknown process that eliminates any publicly-inspectable documentation of the person's contact with the government. Numerous published stories have confirmed this happens, though specifics are never given. It is often justified as being 'terrorism-related', and a cursory search of the web will point out Department of Homeland Security involvement in the Occupy protests, which considers them a domestic terror organization, and thus subject to the kind of rules and extrajudicial process mentioned earlier.

As far as being held for weeks without being charged of any crime... It happens all the time. I won't even bother rebutting that -- do your own homework. You can start with arrests at the national caucus' of either party in the last 20 years, if you need a hint.

As far as being held for weeks without being charged of any crime... It happens all the time. I won't even bother rebutting that -- do your own homework. You can start with arrests at the national caucus' of either party in the last 20 years, if you need a hint.

No, this actually doesn't happen "all the time." Rather, it's incredibly rare. It's also the sort of thing that goes up the appeals chain, and since I've already done considerable homework on it already, "do your own homework" isn't helpful.

Still, taking your claims as perhaps possibly credible, I've checked your "hint" about party caucuses, and have come up flat. Every source I've seen so far describing an arrest at either party's national caucus in the last 20 years also describes what the person was charged with. You're claiming that it's common for protestors to be detained for extended periods without being charged for any crime, but I've yet to come across a single mention of someone being held for weeks without being charged.

As for your first claim, please note that there's no way for anyone else to verify your own claims without more detail. So at this point, I, and anyone else who'd want to believe you, would have to simply take your claim at face value. Given the unusual gravity of what you're claiming --if that's true, it is a huge problem-- I'd really, really like to see something that can be independently verified. Do you have any more details at all, particularly anything that can be followed up on by others? Say for example, the names of the people who you claim have disappeared without a trace after seeing video footage of them being led away in cuffs?

Actually I was thinking along the same lines, IANAL but it occurred to me that Copyright law gives entities the right to control the copying of a work, a false take-down notice infringes on the copyright holder's right to control the distribution of a work, and since NASA is a US government agency it does not hold the copyright but passes it to the public domain, or to "We The People". Perhaps we should fine a good shyster and have him file a class action against scripts for infringing on the copyright of "We The People", a quarter of a million dollars times 300 million people, should get their attention.

Hmm, if I had a few more connections, things would be about to get very inconvenient at Scripps. Wouldn't it be a shame if the FBI raided them and shut them down completely for a few days in order to gather evidence? And you wouldn't want to be their tax attorney when the IRS comes knocking next season. When are we going to treat fraudulent takedown notices as the criminal activity they are?

If each claim had to be accompanied by a $500 bond, to be forfeited in case the clam was false, the abuses would stop. The amount is irrelevant; the work required to post the bond would eliminate robo-claiming. It's illegal to robosign mortgages now; how about making it illegal to robosign all legal claims?

Forget fines. DMCA takedown demands are supposedly filed "under penalty of perjury". Last I heard, perjury is a prosecutable offense. Force all DMCA takedowns to be filed in the name of a specific responsible individual. And start tossing those individuals in prison for these fraudulent takedowns. *Then* I'll be impressed.

No, not really. They would force the accuser to pay the fee. I don't know about 50k, but 5k should do the trick.
There should be some cheap outsourced labor somewhere who can add a small amount of intelligence to tell if the video really is what the script thinks it is for the copyright holders. And if some of that fee was returned to the person who had it removed then we'd have incentive to go after it each time.

- Keep shutting down all youtube videos that anyone asks for them to shut down. This is bad as we can see.- Not shut down on a simple notice and then be found responsible for ALL copyrighted content on their server. This is worse as we can imagine.

That's the problem with the copyright filters at Youtube and elsewhere: Copyright is based on the production of a work, not the work itself. So if NASA releases footage of something that is public domain (paid for by your tax dollars) then if, say, NBC, replays that footage and adds a logo in the lower right corner... NBC can then sue you if you save that footage to your harddrive. So the content might be "Curiousity rover team hugging", which can't be copyrighted, but the production of it is. Since NASA made it public domain, they have no rights to it whatsoever, so anyone can take the content, re-broadcast it, and then claim copyright on that broadcasted content.

Which is a problem in a digital environment: How can you tell whether something came from the original (public domain) source, or the re-broadcaster? YouTube's auto-filters obviously can't. There's no way to tell original from copy; And guess who gets sued if they don't block when they could have? Which underscores another problem with copyright law: Presumed guilt. DMCA notices force providers to take down potentially infringing content. Not actually infringing, potentially-infringing. It's a presumption of guilt; Your innocence must then be established later. And with technology like this, how can a judge, or even yourself, tell the difference between the original 101110101000101110100011 and the copied 101110101000101110100011?

I don't think this is technically right. I could be wrong, but I think NASA doesn't make this footage public domain for the very reason copyleft exists and you bring up in your comment. They don't want people claiming copyright of their work.

NASA still images; audio files; video; and computer files used in the rendition of 3-dimensional models, such as texture maps and polygon data in any format, generally are not copyrighted. You may use NASA imagery, video, audio, and data files used for the rendition of 3-dimensional models for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages. This general permission extends to personal Web pages.

So if NASA releases footage of something that is public domain (paid for by your tax dollars) then if, say, NBC, replays that footage and adds a logo in the lower right corner... NBC can then sue you if you save that footage to your harddrive.

This area isn't actually that clear. You probably cannot rebroadcast the version that has NBC's logo on it, but not because this footage has been re-copyrighted by the addition of the logo. Rather, it's just that the logo itself is copyrighted, and you can't broadcast that. You can, however, remove the logo and broadcast NBC's version of the public-domain footage sans logo. Assuming, at least that they broadcast essentially the original PD video, and have not made any other changes sufficiently creative to produce a new copyright.

I'm not sure if it's been litigated with film, but in the art world, that was litigated in Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. [wikipedia.org], which found that scanning a public-domain artwork does not make your scan copyrighted. So I don't believe simply rebroadcasting NASA footage creates a new copyrighted version of the footage. Maybe if you do some creative editing, then that specific sequence of cuts is copyrighted.

The problem is, sufficiently creative these days has been so narrowly defined as to mean "But ours is off-white instead of muave. See! That's creative!" -- and the courts uphold this. That's one of the problems with our archaic case law / common law judiciary: Once you win a case against an opponent that can't defend themselves, you can then use that precident against an opponent who can, and probably win. The system assumes that both the defense and prosecution are fairly represented, and the judge is impartial in every case. Of course it isn't, so over time, the system biases itself politically and economically in favor of whomever is in power. This was probably by design... a testament to miserable Britain.

We have NASA that uses taxpayer money for servers, but people shy away from their website because it is unfamiliar.

So, NASA sends it to a private company that hosts webcam videos for free, and that private company puts ads at the beginning of the video, and ads in popup windows over the video. You would think no one would use the version with ads all over, but people like what is familiar, so it gets lots of views.

Then, since it is subject to takedown notices (the same way as your hot neighbor's webcam is), some partner in Youtube's giant network requests it to come down, and it goes down with no questions asked. These takedowns happen all the time, and rarely are DMCA takedowns, regardless of what the text may say. Basically, any one that pays Google enough can become a "trusted partner" and tell them which free videos should be removed.

Youtube is perfect for sharing thousands of hours of crap when you have no other platform for sharing your video. It's like today's equivalent of Geocities. It's not the proper place for hosting important content from NASA. If you choose to use Youtube (or Geocities) to find NASA content, you my get lucky and find what you are looking for, but if so, it's just lucky coincidence.

I operate a youtube channel with just over 100,000 subscribers. I almost had my account permanently suspended when several of my government produced, copyright-free videos of 1940s military footage were flagged by some no-name spanish news station. These videos were converted directly from library archive originals. My only saving grace was one of my subscribers was a lower end employee of Google at the time and was able to contact the right people.

I read the summary and concluded that Scripps Local News blocked the video using a false copyright claim. But, then I read the actual article:

"YouTube will block or censor content for one of three reasons: if a video violates the site’s terms of service, if its content is automatically found to match copyrighted content, or if it receives a request from a copyright owner to remove a pirated video."... Content ID, YouTube’s automated copyright monitor, was meant to be the site’s secret weapon in its fight to stay legal, and make some sense – or cents – out of the video chaos: by algorithmically matching content, robots can, ideally, keep track of which videos contain copyrighted material.

So, basically, the whole takedown might've had nothing to do with Scripps Local News issuing a false takedown, and might've had everything to do with YouTube's robots misidentifying the video. Now, we've got a whole comment section full of people who want to attack Scripps for issuing a false takedown, even though we're not even sure what exactly happened. Please update the summary, Slashdot.

This was the result of YouTube's Content ID. Scripps is a media partner with Google. All of their uploads are "protected" by the Content ID system. NASA released the video to the news outlets, Scripps published it on YouTube before NASA did. When NASA did upload it, it was already in the system from the Scripps uploaded and was automacticlly flagged.

No DMCA claim was filed, it was all automatic. Maybe the Scripps employee the posted it could have tagged the video to prevent this, I don't know.

The problem is a result of Google trying to police copyright, not with a company filing a complaint.

What's to keep an enterprising group of people from submitting takedown notices for every new piece of content posted on youtube? Or the Internet as a whole, for that matter? I imagine it wouldn't take too many people to shut the whole thing down in the USA.

Just because it accomplishes task A, that does not mean it works if tasks B,C,D,E,....etc do not work.

Think about it like an anti-virus program. If your anti-virus removed the virus you would not describe the anti-virus program to be working if it destroyed all of your files along with the virus, even those that were not infected.

A few suggestions:- leave youtube, find a better host, or self host- follow the DMCA through to conclusion by taking the fraudulent entity to court.- write your government representitives- move to a country with sane laws (very few of those left, but it's worth a try)